I arrived in London yesterday after a (very long) week away – but the good news is that I am off work until Thursday. My mom and I went to see Chris this morning as it has been two weekends for me and even longer for my mom. (My dad is in Korea so we have no driver in the household).

Chris was coming out of his PT on his new comfie chair. It’s such a great chair, it does look so comfortable and I think it will be excellent for his posture. It took forever to be delivered but so worth waiting for it. It has remote control to adjust the angles, make his foot rest come up or down, and it just looks really comfie. I post pics of the chair. Somehow the thought of Chris in a lounge type chair like this sounds less sad than picturing him on his old wheelchair. So I am excited that now he has two wheelchairs, one for getting around and another one to relax.

I wish I had a wheelchair accessible van to get him out with us on weekends. That would be so much nicer not only for him but for Gabriel and us as a family – as opposed to staying in the hospital. Maybe next year…

Chris was so absolutely thrilled to see me, he was smiling both with his lips and his eyes, making sounds as if wanting to talk, very clearly excited – I definitely got the impression that he knew it was me and also that he knew I had been away for too long… In fact, all the staff was “Hi, I have not seen you in ages!!!” which made me feel so guilty. It was just the last two weekends but add to that the odd weekends in which I was unable to go, and I have been very erratic indeed in the last 2 months.

Chris was also all smiles for my mom – BUT visibly different reaction, which makes me even surer he just knew… I know it sounds obvious that Chris knows and recognizes people, but all I can say is that it is not all the time and many times I really doubt it…

Again, it was a very short visit in which we spend more time driving than in the hospital itself. We needed to make sure we would be back to pick up Gabriel at school at 15:15. I was a real mommy today, dropped him off and picked him off, he is loving it. I also got permission from the school to keep him at home on Wednesday so that I can spend the entire day with Gabriel…

This Friday there is another annual PCT review with full assessments. This is also the follow up meeting to see if the daily 6 hours of one-on-one should be continued or not. I will update then with the outcome of the meeting.